In a Volatile World, Your Strategy Must Be Flexible

The world is a lot more unpredictable than it used to be. The drivers of uncertainty are more intense due to the fact that there are more and more change factors affecting outcomes. Traditional approaches to strategy setting and planning to failure have been rendered useless by the range of likely outcomes. To have a chance of succeeding, strategy makers need to give themselves plenty of opportunities to change course and treat their plan as an evolving construct.

Executives say that their businesses are more unpredictable. They were correct as it turned out. Most sectors of the economy have intensified the factors that drive unpredictability. The number of future states that executives need to account for in making decisions has gone up. Let's take a closer look at the drivers ofunpredictability.